April Update

What a whirlwing things have been around here the last month or so! Pardon the chaos as I try my best to get you all up to speed...

April turned out to be a super busy month for all of us. I had my usual skating lessons, Governor's Picnic meetings, board meetings and the like. Additionally, I started my coaching session with the pageant director and have ALMOST mastered my pageant walk. I now have all four pieces for my pageant wardrobe as well.

April also brought Week of the Young Child. WOYC is a National Celebration that focuses on appreciating those who work with young children, the policies that support early learning and highlights the importance of the early years. I oversee Anchorage's local celebration and this year (again) AAEYC teamed up with our church to host a Family Fair with lots of free, fun, hands on activities for kids. This year we had a proclamation from the Governor's office (big surprise, huh?), the Mayor's office and a resolution from the Anchorage Assembly supporting WOYC. I even got to go the Assembly meeting, receive the resolution, and speak about WOYC, all on live TV! Our event went off without a hitch and hundreds of children were able to have some fun family time while their parents got ideas of simple ways to support their development.

The Mayor's under there somewhere...

Sycely and Scarlet had a great time enjoying all the activities

There's lots to report on the Ella front: she's now weighing in at a whopping 15 pounds 2 oz-just under 5th percentile, but she's over 27 inches. So she's still outweighed by her peers by about 4 pounds give or take and she's still a tiny little Roo Bug, but she seems to be maintaining her figure by being continually active. She's mastered pulling up to standing and she's pretty much always standing in her crib calling to me when she wakes up. She's saying some words now, "Mama" and occassional "Da Da," "more," "hi," and "mapp-o" (apple.) She's uses her little index finger to point at everything which is stinking cute and she's really gotten a knack for tactile books and knows all the spots to feel in each of them now. She's eating lots of new foods and is making her way to finger/table foods now. She LOVES peas and green beans, peaches and rice cakes and give her some freeze dried apples and she's happy as a clam for 30 minutes.

My morning alarm clock

Ella's 9 Month Photos

Sycely has been really developing her visual representation skills and has done some pretty spectauclar artwork or late. Last week she held up a finished painting to me and said, "Look Mommy, it's you and Daddy when you got married." She'd even given Mommy a veil. She's also still pretty stoked about the volcano and we're still working on her volcano project. She's still completely enamoured with her little sister and is quick to let anyone (even strangers) know that Ella is her little sister and that it's fun to be a big sister. She's even started helping feed Ella bites once in a while and her favorite is when Ella eats prunes-go figure!

Lem was only able to help with the nominating committe at State FFA Convention one night this year since rearranging our travels to Idaho (more on that later) had us flying out the second day of convention. At least he got to be there to get them started, and techinically he still hasn't missed a convention in like 15 years.

April also brought sad news regarding my Grandpa's health. After completing both chemo and radiation the doctors determined he was losing his battle with Lymphoma and that there really was no treatment left for him. So, they began working with a wonderful team of Hospice workers to keep him comfortable and cared for so he could stay home at my Uncle's and not spend his last weeks in the hospital. We made arrangements to go down to say Good-bye and, God willing, our travels and our timing were a perfect blessing.